Top 60 Quotes by Alexander Payne

In a sense, 'Schmidt' is the most Omaha of my films. But have I gotten it right? I'm not sure. Did Fellini get Rome right? Did Ozu get Tokyo right?

I think that Peter Jennings is the only decent one of the big three.

If you're trying to recreate life, the life that you best know is the one you grew up with.

I always wanted 'Sideways' to be like a great 1960s Italian film.

A book suggests a whole world and story that I could have never thought of in a million years.

The novel succeeds on terms exclusive to literature. A good film succeeds on terms exclusive to the cinema. That's why so many bad novels can become good movies, like 'Jaws' or 'The Godfather.'

Life mixes tones all the time.

I get asked, 'How can you have such failures in your films?' Well, what else is life about? There's some sense of constant failure in something. Humor gives you a distance from it.

That's how I like to do it with actors, have them really go for it and I'll tell them when it's too much. It's always easier to bring it back then to push it further.

I like actors who, when you see them on screen, you sense a person, not just an actor.